


the dying embers of an altar place

by wreckageofstars



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Drama, Family, Gallifrey, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, One Shot, set during that Peak Grouchy Era of s12
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-17 05:15:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28843701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wreckageofstars/pseuds/wreckageofstars
Summary: She's never been very good at getting back on time. This time, she might regret it.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & The Doctor's TARDIS, Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan & Graham O'Brien & Ryan Sinclair
Comments: 11
Kudos: 68





	the dying embers of an altar place

She’d promised them half an hour, tops.

Of course, that had been before half of Arcadia’s outer citadel had collapsed on top of her.

Half a citadel was probably a slight exaggeration, she mused, trapped rather inconveniently by an errant pillar. Gallifrey’s twin suns taunted her, hanging high in a marmalade sky. The tops of her cheeks were already starting to burn. She’d been so _close_ to escaping the collapse entirely. She’d heard it coming, felt the ground start to rumble, felt the temporal shift like an ache in her neck—but there were always ghosts in the corners of her eyes, here. Smudges of movement. Sounds that might have been survivors, but never were. It was hope that always slowed her down, in the end.

This time she’d paid for it. The dust was still settling around her, into the cracks in the ground, landing in a film on her eyelashes. Her leg was trapped under a broken pillar, toppled, and so far no amount of yelling, scrabbling, stretching, shouting, or swearing had managed to shake it loose. The shock of it would catch up in a moment, she presumed. And then when that passed, she could figure out a way to get herself free. Until then, there wasn’t much to do except to lay there, baking under the suns, slightly scrambled.

“Well done, Doctor,” she told herself, resigned. “It’s a good thing, really, that no one’s here to see you. ‘Cos they’d laugh.”

 _If anyone_ is _here_ , she thought, as loudly and obnoxiously as she could, _now would be the moment_.

But her head was buzzing with the effort, and there was no one there to listen. She’d been wandering for far too long already, head open and aching, reaching for anyone, anything. Gallifrey was radio silent, in every sense of the word.

Maybe this was a sign to stop looking.

She exhaled and let her head clunk gently against the dirt. She’d lost count of how many times she’d come back. The TARDIS wouldn’t park any closer than the outskirts, so she had to hike in every time, picking her way over dunes of sand and rocky outcrops, treading towards smoke. Searching. Always searching.

The crackling of the flames still smouldering in the distance filled her ears. There would have been no time for proper rites, proper rituals, she thought mildly, not for the first time. Hundreds of thousands of minds, lost like breath on glass. No Matrix to hold them safe. Lost, like they’d all been before. Before she’d fixed it. Before she’d fixed it and run off and left them to their own devices. Left them to burn.

History really was a circular sort of thing, wasn’t it. 

A piece of floating ash landed to kiss her cheek, and she closed her eyes.

 _Maybe_ , she thought, and it was a ghostly thing, barely a whisper at the back of her head, _it’s just as right you ended up buried here, too_.

The first time she’d left them, it had hardly been a thought. By the time the TARDIS had wheezed reluctantly away from Andromeda 2 Minor’s spaceport lounge, it had been far too late to course-correct. And by the time the doors were squeaking open into smoke and marmalade, she’d forgotten it had never been a thought in the first place.

They didn’t like it much. Being left behind. She tried to do it sneakily, sometimes, left them snoozing in hotel beds, split up in open-air markets, fumbled excuses back at them like tennis balls. Sometimes it worked.

Mostly, it didn’t.

But the truth wouldn’t do, she thought, gazing up into the sky on fire. There was sand gritted between her throbbing toes, under her nails, between her teeth. She left trails of it, sometimes, red dirt caught in the TARDIS grates. The truth wouldn’t do at all, if only because she still wasn’t sure what the truth _was_. She couldn’t even have said what she was doing here. Searching, but for what? Wandering, but to where? There was no answer that didn’t sound like sheer madness. There was nothing left for her here.

Still. She returned often. The ritual stayed the same. Leave the TARDIS at the edge, grit her teeth and stumble in from the periphery to the burning, smouldering centre. Catalogue what little was left. Let the memories sit in her mind. Sift among the rubble, searching. Come back empty-handed and wait to do it all again the next time.

What she was looking for, she thought sometimes, was a miracle.

“I won’t be long,” she’d told them, wide-eyed and guileless. “And Maisiline 3 is _beautiful_. You won’t even miss me.”

Of course, she tended to give them all less credit than they deserved, lately, when it came to catching her in the act. Ryan crossed his arms, brow wrinkling skeptically.

“Not this again,” he said. “Come on, Doctor, can’t we just come with you?”

“It’s just, you’re not very good at coming back on time,” Yaz said pointedly, leaning across the console, eyebrows raising. “Why can’t we come?”

“It’s just for maintenance,” she protested, flipping a switch for effect and then immediately regretting it, when the brake stabilizers went offline. She flipped it back quickly. “And it won’t take long this time, I promise. And then,” she said, as earnestly as she could manage, “we can all take a squiz at Maisiline 3’s giant mountain. I’ve always wanted to make it to the top. Until then,” and she jostled the zig-zag-plotter pointedly, “you can take a look round for yourselves.” She waggled her fingers. “Take in the local culture, make a faux-pas or two, find all the interesting bits. Unless you think you’re not capable,” she shot over her shoulder as they landed with a shudder. She skidded towards the doors, flinging them open invitingly. Maisiline 3 glinted just beyond, grassy and bright. Full of life. “Of going off on your own, I mean. Some humans can’t handle the pressure, I’d understand.” Her nose scrunched.

Yaz snatched her jacket off the console with a scowl.

“We’re perfectly capable,” she said firmly. “Aren’t we? Graham, Ryan?”

“Er, well,” Graham interjected, looking less enthusiastic about the whole thing. “Actually—“

“I mean, I guess so,” Ryan said. He was looking at her strangely, and she wished he’d stop. She wished they’d all stop. “Just—don’t be too long, right?” He softened. “It’s not as fun without you, that’s all.”

She swallowed. Then, she smiled.

“Half an hour,” she said, watching their backs as they left. “Tops.”

Half an hour, tops. Well, if she ever made it back to the TARDIS, she could probably still manage it. In the meantime, she could feel her skin beginning to peel from her face. This body wasn’t optimized for sun exposure, she thought with a pained wrinkle. Hours had passed, since the collapse. Her thoughts had slowed to a sun-drenched treacle. How long, she wondered faintly, before she was ash, too?

“Hmm,” a voice interrupted. “Trapped, are we? Now that doesn’t sound very like us, dear girl.”

Her nose scrunched in offense. “Oh, no,” she rasped to the empty air. “No, thanks. Could do without the hallucinatin’.”

The invisible voice harrumphed, and the one she heard next was more youthful, if just as familiar.

“You know,” it ventured. “We’re only trying to help.”

“Don’t need it, thanks,” she hissed back, lurching as upright as she could, scowling into the ash and orange. Empty. “Besides, what are you gonna do? Play the recorder at me? _Some help_.”

“There’s no need to be rude.” Posher. She could practically smell the velvet. “Besides, we all know that if you would only reach into your pocket—“

“It doesn’t _resonate_ concrete,” she said, flopping backwards with a muffled groan, squinting her eyes against the glare of the suns. “Or whatever they made the pillars out of. I’ll be honest, I never bothered to ask.”

“When has that ever stopped you?”A new voice wondered. “Aren’t we meant to be clever?”

“It’s too hot to be clever,” she snapped. “And I’m—I’m—“

“Tired,” the voice croaked on, deep and rumbling. “Oh, well, then by all means roast to death. _Tired_ ,” it muttered. “We’ve been tired for centuries.”

“You don’t get to lecture me,” she said wispily. Her brains were throbbing. “If you hadn’t had a Sarah Jane to pull you out of every funk you ever wandered into—“

“Yes.” The next voice was much kinder. “Our friends have always been the best of us, haven’t they?” Boyish and warm. And a trifle disapproving. “They would listen, you know.”

“They would but they shouldn’t,” she whispered. The truth slipped out more easily, it seemed, when there was no one around to hear. “I couldn’t protect my own home, but I can still protect them.”

“ _Ahh_.” Kindly disapproval wiped away in an instant by sheer cantankerous hurt. “So that’s what it is, eh? Guilt? Grief? They wouldn’t have mourned you the same,” it said plainly. “You were their tool, their toy. They didn’t love you. You didn’t owe them anything.”

“Didn’t I?” The smell of smoke was still overwhelming, even after all this time. She thought of the children and the hermits in their beds. She thought of the fields of flowers in the hills above the Academy. She thought about decomposing to join them in the ground.

“An arsonist always returns to the scene of the crime.” The next voice was graver, growlier. It gentled. “But you didn’t set this fire.”

Her breaths were hissing in her throat, now. “ _Didn’t I_?”

“No,” it said simply. “We’re only responsible for the actions of ourselves.”

“You don’t believe that,” she whispered. “You spent your whole life playing chess with other people. Their actions were yours.”

“Setting up the pieces,” the voice retorted quietly, “isn’t playing the game.”

She smiled around the ash in her mouth. “Sounds like something an arsonist would say.”

Another voiced sighed out into the burning desert.

“Why do you keep coming back here?” it wondered gently. “Is it guilt, really? Or are you searching for the truth in what he said? The truth, buried in your mind.” The voice turned wistful. “Sometimes,” it whispered, “it’s easier to just forget.”

“I have a right to know.” Her voice cracked. “I have a right to know _why_ —“

“—why he burnt them all in their beds?” Weary, rasping.

Ah. She’d wondered if he would show up with the rest of them. She swallowed the bile that rose in her throat, the hate she’d never been able to conquer entirely.

“Is there any reason in the universe,” the new voice asked her tiredly, “that could justify all this?”

She knew the answer. “None,” she whispered.

“So why does it matter?”

“It matters because—because—“

“Because if you could hate them again, then maybe it would hurt less.” Northern, just like her. Sharpened by a sheer, slanting edge. “But you know that’s not why. If you hadn’t loved them, then maybe he wouldn’t have burnt them all. Whatever they did—”

“—it wasn’t worth this,” she said quietly. The wind tore across her forehead, damp with sweat. Sweat was good, probably. It meant she wasn’t quite dead, yet.

“Of course it wasn’t.” The voice sounded so close it may as well have been directly in her ear. “Neither is this, y’know.”

“I don’t think you’re in a great position to be judgin’,” she pointed out irritably.

“Nah,” it drawled, “you’ve all but ripped this out of my playbook, of course I’m allowed to judge,” the voice went on, peppery. “Come on. Dragging yourself across the burnt remains of your planet, time after time, when you _know_ —“

“There might still be someone,” she said thinly. “Trapped or buried or hurt. I can’t just—“

“What?” Youthful _and_ cranky. “Abandon one family for another? You’ve got people— _real_ people, living, _breathing_ people—who need you. Half an hour, _tops_ ,” it said, scathing. “Haven’t we left enough people behind? Don’t they deserve better than this?”

“It’s not about deserve,” she breathed. “It’s about—it’s about—“

The air stilled. She watched the heat vibrate in mirages above her, watched the way the air gleamed tauntingly wet. She closed her eyes.

“You know,” the last voice told her gently. “If you’re looking for someone to blame…well.”

“You left them,” she said softly. “You left them, and they burnt.”

“Yes,” the voice whispered. “I did. I would do it again, I think. Will scraping yourself across their grave make it better? By all means, join the bones and the smouldering remains and bury yourself in their ashes, will that _bring them back_?”

She recoiled, cringing into the dirt.

“People are waiting for you,” the voice said, matter-of-fact. “You have a duty to the living.”

“I have a duty,” she rasped, hands scrabbling in the sand. It burned against her fingers. Her leg throbbed underneath her, still trapped, still stuck. Sour guilt flooding up her throat. “But I—“

“There’s nothing here but ghosts.”

“I can’t just let it _be_ ,” she snapped. “I can’t—“

“There is nothing you can do here, Doctor,” the voice promised her gently. “Nothing left for the living in the land of the dead. Go back to your family. They’re not dust, yet. If you hurry.”

“Hurry?” She swallowed, uneasy.

“The sonic doesn’t do concrete,” the voice continued. “Or whatever the hell they made the pillars out of. But it does, I believe,” and it whispered away with the last of the wind, “resonate _sand particles_.”

She swallowed thickly. “Of course,” she whispered to herself. “Stupid Doctor. Stupid, _stupid_ —“

Sharp pain radiated upwards as she twisted awkwardly, reaching for her pocket. The sonic was cool metal against her scalded fingertips.

“Resonating sand,” she breathed, lurching upwards with a groan. She pointed the sonic in front of her, watched blearily as it whirred. “Forgot about that setting.”

The sand beneath her shifted, hissing into warping shapes. Slowly, slowly. How many grains of sand, she wondered faintly, in an eternity? The ground shifted, as the suns glared down onto the top of her head, until there was finally enough leeway to wrest the lower part of her leg out from under. She wrenched herself back, not bothering to be gentle, elbows skidding on the scalding ground. What remained of the outer citadel loomed over her crabbily.

For a moment, she glared balefully up at the sky.

“Right,” she said, finding she had very little excuse to remain moping on the ground now. “Well. _Fine_.”

She staggered to her feet and immediately toppled back over. She staggered to her feet again and put a bit more welly into it. Her coat was plastered to her back with sweat and sand. It would be practical, she told herself sternly, to remove it and probably wrap it around her head before the rest of her skin peeled from her face.

On the other hand, she thought, less sternly. The thought withered before she could finish it. On the other hand, she thought, and left it on.

The TARDIS moaned with reproach when she finally limped in, half-blind from the glare of the light.

“Not a word,” she panted, giving herself a moment—a _moment_ —to catch her breath across the console. “I mean it, not a word.”

The TARDIS gave her not one word, but several.

“I know,” she protested, wide-eyed. “I didn’t _ask_ it to collapse.”

The TARDIS provided her with a few more words, and then passive-aggressively opened a roundel, where a clean coat was waiting. She gingerly shook off the one she was wearing and exchanged it for the other one gratefully. Then she shook the sand out of her hair. The rest of it, she thought, could probably wait.

 _Hurry_ , the voice had said.

“Come on,” she said, programming the coordinates in. “Half an hour,” she reminded, slamming down the dematerialization lever, “ _tops_.“

But when she flung open the doors in anticipation, for a moment she couldn’t have been certain they’d left Gallifrey to begin with. Ash and smoke wafted in on a breeze. The sun was setting behind the thatched roofs in the distance.

Reproach lingered on her tongue, on the heels of blind, unreasonable panic, but she could feel at the back of her head that the TARDIS had done her best. The timeline here was tangled, the temporal eddies rough. She patted the wood of the door comfortingly and darted out, limping as fast she she could.

 _Leave one thing to burn for another,_ she thought, before she could help herself. _How’s that for circular?_

But the sonic was picking up three human life-signs, not far from where the TARDIS had landed, and as she lurched her way in the right direction, she found that—aside from the smoke and the ash choking the air—the village at the foot of the mountain was surprisingly intact. There were people moving fast and with purpose, but there was no panic in the air. No grief. The aftermath of disaster, not the midst of it.

She barged into the building the sonic directed her to and immediately skidded to a painful halt in the front entrance, nearly nose to nose with Ryan. He was holding a basket of clean towels in his arms. His lips pressed together.

“Half an hour?” he said. “ _Really_?”

“That mountain,” she ventured on a suspicion, nose wrinkling with chagrin.

“Volcano,” he confirmed, wrinkling his nose mockingly. “Don’t worry, we sorted it.”

“‘Course you did,” she said, hands drawing to her waist. “Knew you would. Left you in the path of mortal danger on purpose. As a test.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, playing along. “Figured. You just love us in the path of mortal danger.”

Her breath wheezed in her throat, slightly. “Everyone alright?”

“Fine. Graham threw his back out helping lift some supplies, though, they gave us a room to rest in.” He frowned at her. “Are you okay? Hell of a sunburn,” he pointed out.

Her brains were back to treacle. Her mouth worked dryly, searching for an answer.

“Yeah,” she scratched out eventually. Ryan pursed his lips, unconvinced. He set his basket of towels down.

“Doctor,” he said quietly, taking her by the arms gingerly. “Where you been, mate?”

“Nowhere,” she breathed. “Nowhere important.” The air hitched in her throat. “Sorry I was late.”

He was looking at her so strangely. She wished he’d stop.

“It’s alright,” he said. “Just—“

But he closed his mouth over the rest of the words.

“Come on, then,” he said, and helped her without helping her, across the front hall of what she quickly realized was an inn-turned-evacuation-centre.

“You really,” she mumbled, forcing her legs to keep up, “you really have it all under control, don’t you.”

“Learned from the best,” he said, and swung open a side-door to a dark, quiet room. She could hear Graham snoring gently. The fireplace crackled. Yaz peeled herself away from the window, and the darkening sky outside.

“Look who the cat dragged in,” Ryan said, still not letting go of her arm. Guessing, rightfully, she admitted with a grudge, that without it she was about one more step away from toppling over.

There was soot smudged across Yaz’s forehead. She shook her head, exasperated.

“Half an hour?” she said critically, and then took in the rest of her. “Have you got _sunburn_?” she said, even more critically.

“Well,” she began, figuring the lie could sort itself out once she got it rolling. Her legs dropped out from under her, and the lie never even got the chance. _Rude_ , she told her knees, who didn’t respond. Typical of knees, really. _Rude_ , she tried to tell Ryan, when he caught her under the armpits and prevented what she assumed was a well-deserved face plant.

“Don’t bother asking,” she heard him tell Yaz, as she was gently manhandled to a chair in front of the fire. “My days, she’s warm.”

She felt a hand on the back of her head.

“I’ll get a cloth and some water,” Yaz said quietly, and the hand left. Ryan’s worried face coalesced blearily in front of the fire, as she wrenched her stubborn eyelids back open. He was trying to help her out of her coat, she realized.

“No, no,” she tried to say. “This is a new one. Don’t need to take it off.”

“You’re meltin’,” he told her firmly, and wriggled it off before she could get her fingers to cooperate enough to stop it. He draped it across his lap, where he was crouched in front of her, backlit by the fireplace. “Heat stroke, mate. Surprised you can string a sentence together. You’re really not gonna say what you were doing?” he asked. “‘Cos I know it wasn’t maintenance. I don’t think it’s ever maintenance.”

“Talkin’ to myself in the desert,” she mumbled, eyes sliding closed again despite herself. “I _don’t_ recommend it.”

He sighed.

“Wherever it is,” he said, eventually. She heard him stand. “You don’t gotta go alone.”

“Ryan Sinclair,” she said. Her eyes snapped open, focusing on the glow of him in the firelight. “I take you with me everywhere,” she said simply.

He looked back at her sadly. “Not everywhere,” he said.

The dying, spitting crackle of the fire made her stomach churn.

 _Leave one thing to burn for another_ , she thought, and the world began to spin again, so she closed her eyes. The rest of it all blurred together for a while—the crackle of the fire, Graham snoring in the background, the cool damp that eventually arrived at her brow. The sounds of her family. Living, breathing. She wasn’t sure she’d remember it all in the morning, but maybe that was just as good.

“You didn’t need me,” she breathed, eyes still closed against the embers. “To save the day. You didn’t need me at all.”

“Yeah, we did,” Yaz breathed, into her ear. “Of course we did.”

“I didn’t mean to leave you behind,” she whispered.

She felt a careful hand on her shoulder. Heard the whisper of her coat, never far.

“I know,” Ryan said. “Now have some water.”

**Author's Note:**

> MAN I feel like I haven't written an angsty little one shot in a while, but we're starting 2021 belatedly off right by being completely self indulgent here and I for one don't regret it
> 
> also I'm realizing also belatedly that the sonic does in fact resonate concrete I'm pretty sure but LISTEN. we're not gonna mention it. she's got heat stroke it's not her fault. god bless u all.
> 
> anyway BLESS thank you for reading and please let me know what you thought! <3


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